Flash is Trash
Written: Mar 08 '03 (Updated Mar 14 '03)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Warm, bright, and beautiful
Cons: None yet detected
The Bottom Line: The best electrified acoustic dreadnought guitar you can get for under a thousand dollars. Oh, it’s so beautiful. I must go play it now.
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| chaospump's Full Review: Taylor 310ce Dreadnought |
the quick and dirty:
No tortoiseshell rosette around the sound hole. No abalone fret markers shaped into birds or dragons. No whimsical etchings on the pickguard, no inlays of any kind save for the simple pearl dot fret markers. This guitar looks almost Puritan in its austerity, and many less knowledgeable guitar shoppers might pass it by. But not those who recognize the distinctive loveseat-shaped Taylor pickguard, and stop for a closer look.
The top quality materials, rock solid construction, and brilliant design make the Taylor 310CE a classic-to-be, and the under-a-grand price made me feel like I got away with something.
the long and rambling:
I’ve known for a while that I needed an acoustic guitar. Playing nothing but electric guitars for years is horrible for technique, finger strength and conditioning, and being able to play when you’re camping.
Plus, I almost always do the singer-songwriter thing. I’m up there by myself, and electric guitars aren’t the best for that kind of gig. People are used to hearing them with a full band. Also, most people play big electrified jumbos and dreadnoughts, and the sound guy is all set up for them.
So, I decided the time had come. I needed a guitar I could plug in with; singing into one mic and playing into another is a pain. This means onboard electronics; a pickup, and on any reasonably good model, a preamp with volume and EQ controls. I wasn’t sure exactly how much I was going to spend; I hoped I could keep it in the $500 area, but I knew I might have to go closer to $1000. There are many fine makers of such guitars, but the two names that were on my mind were Taylor and Martin, though I expected them to be out of my price range.
I walked into my local music store and sat down in front of the wall o’ guitars. This is the big wall o’ guitars in the main store area, not the bullet-proof-glass-walled special room where they keep the Taylors and Martins and Gibsons and Guilds and such. The store I was in had quite a few Ibanez and Dean models there, and a scattering of others. They ranged in list price from under $300 to about $1500; you can usually knock about 20 to 30 percent off the list to get the real price. Some of them were fine instruments. A lot of them had an excessive amount, to my taste, of inlay work and such window dressing.
I ignored that, and just kept playing more and more expensive guitars, waiting for the curve of sound quality to flatten out. I must have played eight or nine different guitars, and I was pretty attracted to a couple of them.
Still, I couldn’t stay outside the glass walls; I never can. I asked the sales guy if he had a Taylor or a Martin with onboard electronics for under a thousand. To my surprise, he failed to laugh. He did have such a Taylor, and like all Taylors, it included a high quality lined hardshell Taylor case, probably worth about $150 if you bought it separately. The guitar was tagged at about $1650, but they were willing to drop to $970.
I took a good long look at this Taylor 310CE, and all those other guitars started to fade from my memory. I picked it up and strummed a big fat open E chord, and that was all she wrote.
The 300 series is the bottom of the Taylor line. I normally advise people against buying a product like that. You’re almost always better off buying the flagship model of a lesser manufacturer, because they tend to put their best effort into their top of the line product.
There’s an exception to every rule, and this is the exception to that one. Taylor did not skimp in any way on the materials or craftsmanship of this guitar.
It’s a subtle symphony in wood and steel and chrome. The inventory of fine woods is extensive. The top is Sitka spruce, and it sounds as beautiful as it looks. The back and sides are sapele wood, similar in color and tonal quality to mahogany, but with a distinctive barred grain, extraordinarily pretty in the subdued finish here. The neck is mahogany, topped at the headstock with Brazilian rosewood. The fingerboard and bridge are ebony.
All the hardware has that satisfying look and feel of solid quality, from the input jack, to the chrome Grover tuning heads, to the faders on the Fishman Prefix preamp.
The Fishman rig is pretty commonly seen on fine electrified acoustic guitars. The Fishman Matrix pickup is hidden inside the bridge, underneath the saddle. The preamp controls include a volume knob, a three-band EQ, and a fourth “contour” slider which chooses the frequency range affected by the bass, mid, and treble faders. The setup captures every nuance of the guitar’s sound.
Preamps need batteries, and they’ve been a thorn in my side for years. Usually, the only warning you get is when your sound, piped clean through the house P.A. system, suddenly starts sounding like you’re playing through a fuzz-box. Changing the battery usually involves a screwdriver; not good in the middle of a set. When you do get to the battery, chances are you’ll find a cheesy little 9-volt terminal that looks like it belongs in an AM radio, something that has always ticked me off about thousand-dollar-plus guitars.
Fishman solves all these problems. The “barn door” design means you can press on the edge of the control panel, and the whole thing pivots to reveal the battery beneath. The battery slides easily right into a receptacle with built in terminals. Even though it only takes a few seconds to change it, Fishman saves you from nasty surprises with a low battery warning LED.
Even the strings on this instrument are remarkable. The stock Elixirs are a fairly new concept in strings, yet they’ve already become standard with several of the top-tier guitar manufacturers, including Larrivee and Alvarez-Yairi, as well as Taylor. The strings are coated in a thin polymer sheath. I can’t yet vouch for whether they’ll live up to their hype of lasting 3 to 5 times longer than standard steel strings, but what they say about greatly reduced finger squeak and a much smoother feel is certainly true.
Now let’s get to the heart of the matter; playability and sound. The action is very reminiscent of a high quality electric guitar. I can’t make it buzz even slightly unless I hit it harder than Pete Townsend. There’s no contact at all between your hand and the edges of the fretwires as you move up and down the neck, only the satiny smooth feel of mahogany.
The sound is phenomenal. Unplugged, it’s loud, clear, clean. It’s warm but never muddy, bright but never shrill. Through a good amp or the P.A. it’s even better, and the EQ contour control makes the three-band EQ unusually versatile and precise.
If you don’t want to settle for just a “good” electrified acoustic guitar, but didn’t think you could afford a great one, let the Taylor 310CE prove you wrong.
Click here for my review of the 1957 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop
Recommended:
Yes
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chaospump
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Member: Aaron
Location: LA, CA
Reviews written: 52
Trusted by: 68 members
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